The seldom-heard Schubert piece was written for the arpeggione, an unusual cross between guitar and cello that was briefly popular in the early 19th century.

Bartok, a musicologist as well as composer, collected folk music from his native Hungary and elsewhere, and those melodies are reflected in the arrangement to be performed by Spell.

Basler composed his “Sonata” specifically for Spell, who has performed it worldwide. “Though thoroughly modern, the piece is audience friendly,” Spell said. “With an extraordinarily wide emotional range, the work presents moments of extraordinary beauty, technical fireworks and everything in between.”

A frequent performer at musical venues across Western North Carolina, Spell recently was featured as soloist and master teacher at the Central American Flute Festival, held in the Costa Rican National Theatre in the capital, San Jose.

Reading Room

“In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

— George Orwell

We live in an age — the relativity of truth — in which Orwell’s adage seems as dated as monocles or top hats. Just as Darwin’s theory of evolution led to Social Darwinism, a philosophy pitting one human being against another with survival of the fittest as the supreme law for success, so Einstein’s theory of relativity changed popular philosophy and cultural mores as radically as it did the study of physics.

This Must Be the Place

Outside the Tipping Point Brewing windows on Main Street, heavy snowflakes cascaded upon downtown Waynesville last Wednesday night. Cars cautiously cruised through the intersection, with the snowfall increasing as the minutes ticked by.